


Twenty Minutes and the Abyss

by vega_voices



Series: Sleeps with Butterflies [47]
Category: CSI, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 22:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>But divorce was not as final as death. Neither, logic reminded her as she hit dial and raised the phone to her ear, was separation. What had it been she’d heard a few months ago? The widow missing her husband, telling her how when they were together, she’d felt fearless?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Minutes and the Abyss

**Title:** Twenty Minutes and the Abyss  
 **Author:** vegawriters  
 **Fandom:** CSI: [Sleeps with Butterflies](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/79902.html)  
 **Pairing:** Grissom/Sara  
 **Rating:** Teen  
 **Timeframe:** Post _Under a Cloud_ (S. 14)  
 **A/N:** For cocoapuffy. I think she knows why.  
 **Disclaimer:** Sara Sidle, Gil Grissom, they’re owned by other people (CBS, etc). And those people make money off of them. But if the powers that be want to take a look at that spec script I wrote …

 **Summary:** _But divorce was not as final as death. Neither, logic reminded her as she hit dial and raised the phone to her ear, was separation. What had it been she’d heard a few months ago? The widow missing her husband, telling her how when they were together, she’d felt fearless?_

The first thing that came back was her feet. She felt them, heavy as concrete blocks, her arms still a painful tingle, her head still not quite attached to her body while she swam her way backward in the room, still gaining her bearings in the puke green of the light from the generators. For the briefest of instances, she allowed herself an obligatory “why the fuck me?” After all, wasn’t surviving divorce, stalking, serial rapists, abusive boyfriends, serial killers, her mother’s psychosis and her father’s drinking enough? But as quickly as the thought passed through her head it was over, the logic that bubbled under the endless emotional tides that ebbed and flowed in her body reminding her that she was alive so she needed to shut up.

After the concrete broke from her feet and the pins and needles in her arms became no more than the bite of a tattoo needle, she felt her lungs inflate, pressing against her ribs, her heart still thudding so loudly she was surprised it hadn’t set off the bomb. It was then, as she exhaled her first normal breath since she’d opened the satchel and seen the glowing lights that told her the explosives were armed, that she realized her thumb was working the place on her finger where her wedding ring used to rest.

It had been just the day before that she’d realized the tan lines had evened out.

Around her, the lights flashed and the machines beeped. The hospital coming back to life. Outside, under the cover of thunder, there was a crash. The bomb squad exploding their charge. What had been the bomb guy’s name? Anthony?

Don’t look twice, the logic warned her. She had a tendency to gravitate to the ones who stepped up when things were bad. For all her independence, for all her ability to storm off into the wilderness and survive on her own, there was still a little girl inside of her, begging her not to give up on the dream of a Disney Prince. You’d think, logic scolded, that she’d have learned by now.

Another deep breath and she stood, wiping her clammy palms on her jeans. Despite the dry air inside the hospital, they were still damp from the rain outside. The door down the hall opened again and the bomb guy, at least she thought it was the bomb guy, he looked different with his blast suit open and the helmet off, walked a sealed canister to her. She signed for it and took the can, holding the other side of death in her hands.

Another breath and her head cleared. She was alive. That was what mattered and now she had work to do. Pulling her phone from her pocket, Sara flipped through her contacts, intending to call Hodges so he could come retrieve the canister while she processed Bomber Doe. She had to document the incident for the record, had to sign for the rest of the evidence. But first her finger lingered over a name, one she’d resorted to emailing more than calling because even hearing his voice was too painful. Lately their communications were perfunctory: taxes and financial records. They ignored the unsigned papers and the elephant standing over their shoulders.

But divorce was not as final as death. Neither, logic reminded her as she hit _dial_ and raised the phone to her ear, was separation. What had it been she’d heard a few months ago? The widow missing her husband, telling her how when they were together, she’d felt fearless?

“Hi Gil,” she said, speaking to his voicemail. “Look … call me when you can. I don’t even know where you are right now or what your plans are … but just … just call me, okay? Thanks.”

Quickly, before emotions could tell logic that she should regret the call, she flipped back into work mode, called Hodges for him to pick up the bomb fragments, and headed upstairs to begin processing the man who had almost ended her life.

***

  
She wasn’t surprised at the knock on the door. As she walked to open it, for the briefest of moments, she allowed herself to think that maybe, just maybe, Gil was on the other side, roses in one hand and Hank’s leash in the other. But she knew better. Knew that knights in shining armor appeared in the guise of men in bomb suits and best friends carrying perfectly made coffee. Gil had never been that for her, despite his desires. He wasn’t built for that role, wasn’t made for the responsibility that came with being someone’s hero.

No, she wasn’t surprised at all to see the man standing on the other side. Jim looked tired, more tired than he’d looked in months, and his eyes were red. She smiled softly and stood back, allowing him inside. In silence, she took his jacket and hung it in the closet and led him through to the kitchen. He paused midway through and she turned to see what had caught his attention. His eyes were on a photo she hadn’t yet taken down – not that she’d removed any really – the three of them at the reception thrown by the lab a couple of years ago. She’d been in her wedding dress, leaning on Gil’s arm. Brass stood next to her, what Sara had come to understand was a fatherly expression on his face.

“What happened to your father, Sara?”

She blinked. She thought everyone knew. “My mother killed him,” she answered, amazed that how all these decades later it could still hurt like it did. “She’s a schizophrenic and was in the middle of an episode and my father was abusive when he was drinking. One night while he was sleeping, she got out one of the kitchen knives and stabbed him seven times.”

Brass turned, looked at her, and shook his head. “And how many times have you told that story?”

“I lost count around the age of fifteen. And then I stopped talking about it.” She shrugged and walked over, picking up the photo. “This was a wonderful night.”

“What happened between you two, Sara?”

She blinked and looked at him. “Jim … I just don’t know.”

He smiled sadly. “Yes, you do.”

“Come on,” she nodded to the kitchen, “I just made coffee.”

They shared a smile at the reference from his earlier comment and moved to the kitchen which bathed in the early afternoon light that came through her recently parted blackout curtains. It wasn’t like she’d slept anyway. Coffee was her primary fuel. She poured a cup for each of them and they settled together on the couch back in the living room. She stared into a point between her and the photo Brass had noticed. He stared at his coffee.

“Why didn’t you ever remarry, Jim?” She looked at him, knowing the answer.

“It was easier to be angry than to ask for that second chance.” He sighed. “I was a lousy husband, Sara.”

“You don’t need to say anything.” She shrugged. “I’m a lousy wife.”

“I doubt that.”

She looked at him for a long time. “No, I am. I’m as selfish as he is, Jim. It’s funny, because I was so worried to tell people we were in trouble, so worried that they’d see me as this terrible person who hurt their god-like figure. I forget that to me, he’s just a man. He’s the man I married. But with only a few exceptions, people seem to be … I hate to say ‘on my side’ but he’s easy to revile because he’s absent.” She sighed. “Nick is hurt. More than he ever wants to say. But …” she sighed and stared up at the ceiling for a minute. “It isn’t about Nick or Greg or anyone else … it’s about me and Gil and we’re so twisted in knots that I don’t know if it’ll ever get untangled.”

Jim chuckled sadly. “I’ve been there.” He shook his head at her. “Nancy and I couldn’t get untangled.”

Sara blinked back tears. “He’s my _husband_ , Jim. That means something to me. I didn’t take that vow lightly.”

Jim took a drink of coffee. “You wouldn’t, Sara. I don’t think anyone thinks you would.”

“I don’t know. I know everyone remembers how in love with Gil I was for those first few years.”

“What they know is how in love you are with him now.”

She sighed. “I am.” Why did this feel like it was going in circles? She looked at him. “Jim, you need to move on, you know.”

He chuckled dryly. “I’ve been saying that to myself for twenty years.” He gave her a smile. “And you, Sara?”

“I’m not ready.” She sighed. “Not yet.”

“You deserve …”

“Whatever I want to deserve, Jim.”

They looked at each other for a long time. Finally, he broke the silence with a tired sigh. “You know, Sara, I always considered you …”

“I know.”

“I don’t know why,” he shrugged a bit. “But there’s a part of me that sees you as … and it isn’t fair … maybe the woman Ellie could have been.”

“We all have our own paths to walk, Jim.” She gave him a smile, “but I appreciate the sentiment.”

***

She sat alone on the porch, feeling the weight of her feet and the movement of her lungs inside her rib cage. It was funny, she mused over and over again, how something so intense could make her wake up and smell the coffee. It hadn’t been the first time she’d been in danger. It hadn’t even been the most dangerous situation now that she knew the bomb was a fake. No. She’d had rapists hold weapons to her throat and guns leveled at her by gang bangers. She’d had boyfriends throw her down the stairs and her mother hold her hand over a hot stove. She’d felt her life flash before her eyes while water rose under a car where she was trapped. She’d felt her heart snap completely in two as she walked out of the house she and Gil had bought and shared. And every time, she had come to see something more important, something different in life.

Today though, she still wasn’t sure where the priority lay, other than reaching out for her husband and seeing if he reached back.

The part of her that knew she could be happy and whole without her husband lectured her. He’d left. He’d told her he wanted to separate. He’d told her it was best that they just accept that their lives were different. But it wasn’t need that was driving her to wander the paths of her life in her head. It was want. Because she knew he wanted to be here with her but his chosen life had taken him away. She knew that she wanted to be with him, but it was better for their combined expenses if she stayed in the states. She knew he wanted to be there with her through the procedures to deal with her endo. She knew she didn’t feel like an obligation when his voice caught and he told her he wanted to fly down off the mountain with wings made of leaves. He would if he could.

They loved each other but more than that, they were partners.

That was what she didn’t understand about people who entered marriage based on love alone. If it was love alone, she could walk away. She could take Catherine’s advice and dry her tears and fall into bed with Doug or Greg or that really sweet forensic science professor over at WLVU. If it was love alone, she wouldn’t have said yes to his second proposal. Or his first.

Partnership was not so easily broken.

When she’d sat down to begin the letter, written longhand, on a sheet of stationary that he’d purchased for her for Christmas three years ago, she’d lit a cigarette. It smoldered in the ashtray, the smoke rising to drift off on the wind, but she hadn’t yet raised it to her lips.

Yes, staring into the abyss for twenty minutes had given her a new outlook. A realization that if he wanted this to truly be over, the partnership would have to end as well because she could not accept only half of their relationship. She could not accept the love and the tenderness without knowing they were working together, truly working together. And she could not continue to research alongside him, even from three thousand miles away, without the love.

She wrote. She told him of her thoughts about the bomb and the man who had saved her life and the way Greg smiled at her. She told him about how the other day at the airport, Doug had kissed her and she’d fallen into the embrace and wished she had the energy and desire to do more. She told her husband the hard truths, about how she did feel lonely and neglected and yet understood every single reason for his choices, so she didn’t want him to work his overactive guilt complex into a tizzy. She told him she either wanted to make this work or they had to end it. Completely. Not a break. Not a separation. They were married or they weren’t. They were partners or they weren’t.

She didn’t need him to come home, crawling and begging forgiveness. She didn’t need to jump on a plane and join him. The love, she told him, was there. It would never fade. But she needed her partner back. The man whose conversations were full of more than mundane checklists but instead excited determination over the next phase in a project. The man who inspired her to comb through their combined research. The man who was as energized by her as she was by him. They would always love each other. But they had always been more than that.

Twenty minutes had told her one thing.

It was time to move forward.

_fin_


End file.
